1. Field of the Invention
The present invention includes systems and methods that relate generally to means of providing car insurance status information and more specifically to means of displaying information that relates to the insurance status of a vehicle so that said status can be comprehended promptly and accurately, as well as providing capabilities of comprehending said status information at a remove from the vehicle.
2. Related Art
Motor vehicles driven on public roads in the United States are generally required to be insured by their owners for damages or injuries that may be caused by that vehicle's operation. Liability insurance is mandatory in 47 states and the District of Columbia. New Hampshire, Tennessee and Wisconsin do not have mandatory insurance laws. According to the Insurance Institute, approximately 14% of the motorists in the U.S. do not carry insurance. Some studies have resulted in estimates that the actual percentage is closer to 20%. In some metro areas, the percentages can even be greater than 50%. Approximately 6% of the cost of a vehicle insurance premium paid by the average vehicle owner is due to uninsured motorists. A system for regulating and enforcing these requirements have been instituted by the governments of the states, but these systems do not yet operate optimally. It is well known that there is significant room for improvement in this area. Several states have tried a database approach with limited degrees of success due to problems with high error rates. This approach is also very costly since it requires every insurance carrier to comply (some do or will not) and because the database system needs to be updated on a daily basis to maintain an acceptable measure of accuracy. In March of 2005, the Missouri State Auditor, Claire McCaskill, released a report titled “Efforts to Enforce Uninsured Motorist Law”. The report detailed that motorists in Missouri are required to carry “uninsured motorist” coverage to compensate for the numbers of motorists that do not comply with the insurance requirements. For the average motorist the cost of the uninsured motorist coverage is estimated in this report to be $23.00 per vehicle annually, costing about $90 million annually for just the state of Missouri, which is not even one of the 10 most populous states in the U.S. The report also suggests a budget request for approximately $8.2 million to initiate a system for monitoring insurance companies and motorists to reduce the number of uninsured motorists. Just paying for such a system is also problematic given the budget constraints most state governments are coping with. Additionally, the uninsured motorist coverage that policy holders (often by state mandate) pay extra for generally covers only bodily injury (normally with a small limit) and does not provide any coverage for property damage. A reduction in the number of uninsured motorists would help to reduce some of this burden placed upon those motorists that do abide by the regulations.
One major impediment to more effective administration and enforcement of these insurance laws are difficulties in monitoring the current actual insurance status of vehicles. While there may be some variations in detail among the various states, certain aspects are relatively common among them. At present, motorists receive a proof-of-insurance ID card when they sign up for an insurance policy, and they are usually required to present this insurance card to a police officer when requested. However, the status indication and expiration date on the card may have been accurate when the card was issued, but may no longer be correct by the time the officer sees the card. Insurance policies can often be paid for over time, with the printed information on the card reflecting the expiration date for the policy if it were to be fully paid for. When the motorist does not continue with the payments, or simply cancels the policy, the officer will not know from looking at the card that the motorist is actually no longer insured. Also, unless an officer conducts such an investigation of a vehicle and motorist, there is no way for the officer to readily determine whether or not a given vehicle passing by even has a card indicating that a policy was issued for that vehicle, outside of the question of whether or not that policy is still in effect.
The issue of how to provide a law enforcement officer ready access to relevant vehicle information by visual inspection is germane to vehicle license plate design as well. But there are also significant differences between the requirements for providing ready visual access to license plate information and the requirements that are relevant to insurance status information. The license plate is issued by the state, and no other manner of procuring license plates is available. The state can specify the term, contents, and design of the plates, and it is not possible to get a set of plates (or renewal decal) for any period other than those specified by the state, nor is it possible to get the vehicle plates or renewal for a partial term or on a payment over time status (the payments for which being possibly discontinued prior to completion). Additionally, the license plates are designed with the primary purpose of providing a unique identifying label to each vehicle that is always available for ready access by visual inspection. It is also important for an officer to be able to recognize the plate number from at least a certain distance, and in a short period of time, when circumstances dictate. Hence, the license plate number (and letters or symbols) dominates the design of the plates both in prominence and placement, and the expiration information is given a secondary display status. By contrast, insurance policies are provided by private parties, they are variable in their terms and specifications, and they can be procured even though the term indicated may not have been fully paid for.
The pertinent insurance information that a police officer might need is provided on the aforementioned insurance ID cards, but an officer can generally only access this information if the driver is stopped for some other reason. When the driver is unavailable, or the vehicle is parked, an officer usually cannot access the pertinent information. Placing the insurance card information in a place of constant prominence, such as a vehicle window, could provide access to the information at all times, but will also present other difficulties. Among these difficulties is the inability, with normal vision, to be able to read this information from any significant distance, due to the need to arrange a substantial amount of insurance information upon a small card. Since the police officer's purpose is chiefly to ascertain whether or not the vehicle is properly insured, the majority of this information is unnecessary. In addition, the insurance card includes a significant amount of personal information that would not be advisable to make available to any passerby. There exists then, an unmet need for a means to provide law enforcement personnel with ready access to the insurance status of a vehicle. This means of ready access should be intelligible quickly and accurately from a specified distance (such as the distance that typically separates two vehicles in traffic), and will preferably not provide unnecessary details or unrelated personal information.